Articles for category: Leadership

March 6, 2015

Greg Thomas

It’s not going to be easy…

Let’s get started… “I’m not telling you it is going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” Simple enough, less than 20 words, another pretty little quote showing up in your Newsfeed to give you that spark of energy for 30 minutes.  What could you accomplish in those 30 minutes?  What if you kept reading it over and over and over again, would you read it 48 times in a single day so you could have that spark the whole day long?  Would you be willing to stay up that long? I’ve written the second part

February 11, 2015

Greg Thomas

How not to Prep for an Interview – Part II

So part deux (two) in this epic series of how not to prep for an Interview.  In our first part to this mini-series the focus was on the Interviewee and what that individual needs to do to prepare for an interview.  But like any road, it runs both ways, and yes, you the interviewer need to be just as prepared. There are some old adages that you know within the first 30 seconds, 5 minutes, the colour of their shoes, etc, etc that you are going to hire someone that walks through your door.  People are very proud to state their track

February 3, 2015

Greg Thomas

How not to Prep for an Interview – Part I

I’ve been trying to figure out how to name this post because I knew from the get-go that it was going to be done in two parts where the viewpoint in Part I is from that of the person being interviewed (the interviewee) and Part II is from that of the person conducting the interview (the interviewer).  Both perspectives are in regards to how one should not conduct themselves at interviews. I’ve been involved in a least 100+ interviews, being on both side of the fence (more on the interviewer side) – can’t say 1,000+ and I am actually happy to

Insulate the Failure

I know this is one of those topics out there that people might go – “oh great another blog about letting people fail and everyone being happy and unicorns and rainbows and let’s hold hands and save the world, etc, etc, etc…”.  And to some extent it might be, to some extend it might not. One of, if not the hardest part about managing/leading a team is giving your team the opportunity to fail because at some point, the little voice in the back of your end starts connecting the dots and going “Red Alert!  Red Alert!  We’re going to crash”.  And

December 23, 2014

Greg Thomas

Build the Team not the Process

No one has ever, ever shipped a piece of software and thanked the process.  Apologies to everyone that work with methodologies and ALM, but it’s true. Why? Because, processes don’t ship software, people do.  Do a mental back-check of the last few releases to see what really got them out the door?  Was it the check-in process, how bugs were logged or what happened at the last triage meeting?  Probably not.  No one ever ships a release and goes – “Thank the heavens we have this process because otherwise we would never have been able to go out the door”.  No, it always goes